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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Eagleton, what kind of age do we live in, where "meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable"?
(a) Traditional.
(b) Esoteric.
(c) Postmodern.
(d) Modern.

2. According to Eagleton, why is Hans-Georg Gadamer not concerned about bringing our cultural preconceptions to a literary work?
(a) Because like the literary work, they come from tradition.
(b) Because like the literary work, they come from modernity.
(c) Because unlike the literary work, the come from tradition.
(d) Because unlike the literary work, they come from modernity.

3. What "twin impacts" does Eagleton cite in the mid-Victorian period that was particularly worrisome to the ruling class?
(a) Religious ideology and social statis.
(b) Religious ideology and social change.
(c) Scientific discovery and religious ideology.
(d) Scientific discovery and social change.

4. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?
(a) Sociology.
(b) Economics.
(c) Psychology.
(d) Linguistics.

5. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Realized.
(b) Understood.
(c) Intended.
(d) Evaluated.

6. What is the name of the Russian formalist who published the pioneering essay that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Fyodor Dostoevsky.
(b) Leo Tolstoy.
(c) Viktor Shklovsky.
(d) Alexander Pushkin.

7. What genre of writing does Eagleton provide that is an example of writing that is NOT considered to be literature?
(a) Comics.
(b) Young Adult.
(c) Romance.
(d) Science fiction.

8. The distinction between fact and fiction in defining literature is what?
(a) Complicated.
(b) Important.
(c) Difficult.
(d) Questionable.

9. According to Eagleton, the literary work in Romantic society is seen as a ________ that is in contrast to the "fragmented individualism" of capitalist society?
(a) Mysterious inorganic unity.
(b) Imperious mechanical unity.
(c) Imperious inorganic unity.
(d) Mysterious organic unity.

10. What year did Terry Eagleton's "Literary Theory: An Introduction" first appear?
(a) 1963.
(b) 1983.
(c) 1993.
(d) 1943.

11. How do linguists describe the effect of language where "the texture, rhythm and resonance of words are in excess of their abstractable meaning."
(a) "A disproportion between signifiers and signifieds."
(b) "A disproportion between two signifieds."
(c) "A disproportion between one signifier for every other signified."
(d) "A disproportion between two signifiers."

12. What is the German word for how reality is not objective, but experienced and organized by an individual subject?
(a) Lebenswelt.
(b) Bildungsroman.
(c) Wendepunkt.
(d) Vorgeschichte.

13. For the economist Eagleton discusses, "those economists who dislike theory or claimed to get along better without it" were what?
(a) In the grip of the most current theory.
(b) Had no knowledge of any theory.
(c) Didn't understand the importance of theory.
(d) In the grip of an older theory.

14. What novel by John Updike does Eagleton discuss from the position of reception theory?
(a) Rabbit Run.
(b) Couples.
(c) Of the Farm.
(d) Terrorist.

15. According to Eagleton, William Empson "insists on treating poetry as a species of ______language."
(a) Spectacular.
(b) Ordinary.
(c) Secular.
(d) Religious.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to Eagleton, as the first industrialist capitalist nation, England becomes what kind of state?

2. From the viewpoint of Roland Barthes, Eagleton argues that "reading is less like a _______ than a _________."

3. Eagleton argues that if literature includes much factual writing, it also excludes "quite a lot of" what?

4. For Eagleton, how did the romantics usher a "forestalling of reasoned critical enquiry"?

5. How far has the "theoretical revolution" spread according to Eagleton?

(see the answer keys)

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